On the menu today: The latest question from the “I’m just asking questions” crowd is, “Is Charlie Kirk really dead?” I wish I were making that up, but I am not. Unfortunately, a new survey from the Manhattan Institute indicates that the GOP is made up of two factions; the smaller but still sizable faction of new Republicans is not only not all that conservative in their policy preferences — in fact, on issue after issue, they’re pretty progressive — but significant numbers believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that stories of the Holocaust are exaggerated, and that the moon landing was faked. Read on.
At Last, Keen Insight from the Wisest Voices
This should go without saying, but don’t fire a gun at Tim Pool’s house. Alas, apparently that does need to be said. On Saturday, the right-wing podcaster posted on X that, “Last night a vehicle approached our property and opened fire. No one was hurt. Our security team is reviewing the incident and will be relaying the report to appropriate law enforcement[.] This is the price we pay for speaking out against evil.”
Back in July, the Wall Street Journal did a long and sympathetic profile of Pool, a “right-wing streamer” who has attracted 2.57 million subscribers on YouTube for “TimCastIRL.” In between portraits of Pool in his signature black beanie hat and his skateboarding, the Journal informed its readers that, whether you loved him or hated him or had never heard of him, he was turning into someone impossible to ignore: “Pool has built a media brand influential with those millennial and Gen-Z voters, with his own mini empire based at a compound in West Virginia. It now includes six streaming shows, daily clips of Pool and friends skateboarding at an indoor skate park he built on the property and a 24-hour video feed from a nearby chicken coop.”
Deep in that article, the Journal reminded its readers that Pool was one of six commentators who worked for Tenet Media, which was a front for Russian-government funded propaganda operations.
Anyway, let’s check in on what’s new with that influential media brand.
In the December 5 episode, Pool’s guests included Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversy-courting gadfly who was once driven from social media for stating that sexual relationships between teenage boys and adults could happen “perfectly consensually” and can be positive experiences for adolescents, and former Representative George Santos. Santos pled guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, then was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in April. In October, President Trump issued Santos a commutation of his sentence; Trump also waived the requirement that Santos pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to his victims.
Brace yourself, because somehow Santos cleared the minimum threshold to emerge as the comparable hero of the forthcoming story.
The topic of discussion was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the inane claims by fellow right-wing podcaster Candace Owens that Kirk was killed by a vast and ever-growing conspiracy.
“On this issue, I have more sympathy with her than I do with the other side because I see someone. . . sincerely searching for the truth,” Yiannopoulos insisted. He continued, “The astronomically inadequate explanations given, in my view, for the actions before, at, and after Charlie’s death and the behavior afterwards from both the federal government and Turning Point executives — you think nothing of his deeply, deeply sinister wife?”
Santos: What? How is she sinister? No, Milo. Milo, please.
(CROSSTALK)
Santos: Please, please, explain to me, how is Erika Kirk sinister?
Yiannopoulos: Have you seen the difference in the size of her hands with Charlie’s in their wedding pictures, and then compared it to him in his casket?
Santos: Are you saying she’s a man?
Yiannopoulos: No. No. I’m saying that that wasn’t Charlie in there.
Santos (stunned): What are you talk — come on!
The conversation continues:
Yiannopoulos: But his body hasn’t been buried. Did they lose it? It happens.
Pool: Do you think there’s a possibility that Charlie is alive?
Yiannopoulos: I think it’s vanishingly slight. I think it’s the probably the most —
Santos (incredulous): Oh, you even give it a slight —
Yiannopoulos: Of course it’s possible. And the behavior of some of the Turning Point people makes me wonder.
Now, readers, I regret the necessity of inflicting that conversation upon you. I completely understand if you react by quoting the Adam Sandler film, Billy Madison, “What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.”
Now, besides the ghoulish insanity on display, keep in mind that hundreds of people watched Kirk get shot in the neck live, in front of their eyes. And many more watched it, to their horror, on unedited video. This is not that different than the conspiracy theories suggesting that John F. Kennedy survived his assassination and is secretly living somewhere. You have to explain away all of the people who saw the shooting live and the infliction of the fatal wound.
(Notice that despite Pool’s big subscriber numbers, that video has, as of this writing, almost 200,000 views.)
And yet, Pool is, we’re told by the Journal and others, influential. He, his guests, and those like him represent the new wave of right-of-center voices. They’re the wise minds and leaders on the rise, shaping the discourse and guiding the national conversation.
There’s been a lot of buzz about a revealing new survey from the Manhattan Institute, comparing the beliefs between longtime Republican voters and a demographic they characterize as “New Entrant Republicans,” described as “recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.” This group made up 29 percent of the overall sample of Republicans. Among the findings:
The 2020 election: Just over half of the Current GOP (51 percent) believes that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was fraudulent, while 41 percent say that view is probably or definitely false. Among New Entrant Republicans, support for this belief rises to 60 percent.
Vaccines and autism: One in three in the Current GOP (33 percent) believe that childhood vaccines cause autism. This view is more common among college graduates (42 percent) than non-graduates (29 percent), and among New Entrant Republicans (47 percent).
9/11 conspiracies: Four in ten in the Current GOP (41 percent) believe that the 9/11 attacks were likely orchestrated or permitted by U.S. government actors. Belief is highest among men (48 percent), college graduates (51 percent), Republicans under 50 (53 percent, compared with 34 percent of those over 50), and New Entrant Republicans (53 percent). Among black GOP voters the figure is 58 percent, and among Hispanic GOP voters, 56 percent.
Holocaust denial or minimization: Nearly four in ten in the Current GOP (37 percent) believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Younger men are especially likely to hold this view (54 percent of men under 50 vs. 39 percent of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41 percent agree, compared with 18% of women over 50. Racial divides are particularly striking:
- 77 percent of Hispanic GOP voters
- 30 percent of white GOP voters
- 66 percent of black GOP voters
Moon landing: A similarly sized chunk of the Current GOP (36 percent) believes that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked by NASA. Again, younger men are more likely to hold this view (51 percent of men under 50 vs. 38 percent of women under 50). There are stark racial divides: while only 31 percent of white GOP voters believe the conspiracy, this rises to 59 percent among Hispanic Republicans and 63 percent among black Republicans.
(One of the six “oft-labeled conspiracy theories” tested is “Covid-19 leaked from a laboratory in China.” I would really dispute whether that counts as a conspiracy theory, and I noticed they didn’t break out the numbers on this one. Whenever I express doubt about a conspiracy theory, someone brings up the lab leak. My takeaway from our global annus horribilis was, “Sometimes people who don’t want to believe a legitimate idea — and this is the really important part, supported by evidence — and dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.” Apparently, some people took away from the experience of Covid-19, “Everything dismissed as a conspiracy theory must be true.”)
These “New Entrant Republicans” aren’t just not all that conservative, and they are prone to believing in conspiracy theories. On policy preferences, they’re really not all that much of Republicans at all:
Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives. A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence. Yet they overwhelmingly identify as Republicans today and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
Poll results like that suggest that Trump has succeeded in attracting two sizable and significant groups to his political coalition: disaffected Democrats who rarely agree with the Republican Party on policy but like Trump’s personal style, and lunatics who doubt that the Holocaust or moon landing happened or that al-Qaeda is responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
(If you’re wondering about the sample size, “Between October 15 and 26, 2025, the Manhattan Institute surveyed four separate national audiences: 1,493 Republicans and/or 2024 Trump voters, 301 black Republicans and/or 2024 Trump voters, 501 Hispanic Republicans and/or 2024 Trump voters, and 500 additional registered voters overall. The sample was reached primarily via online panels (2,172 interviews) with an SMS-to-web component (623 respondents).”)
In light of all this, it’s not the least bit surprising that Republicans in Washington are having a hard time governing, even aside from factors like a small House majority. The demographic of “Republican voters” is now so large it is hard to build a consensus to support any given policy. A chunk — maybe about a third? — of Republican voters don’t really want a smaller federal government, less regulations, a tough line against the Chinese Communist Party, tough enforcement of immigration laws, dismantling of DEI policies, etc.
But at least we’ve got the likes of Candace Owens, Tim Pool, and Milo Yiannopoulos to guide us through these uncertain times.
ADDENDUM: From our John Fund:
The feds wanted the states to report Social Security numbers, birth dates, and addresses for the 42 million Americans — that’s one out of every eight people — who benefit from the approximately $100 billion federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The goal was to identify ineligible recipients.
Every red state with a Republican governor responded positively to the release of the information (along with North Carolina, where the Democratic governor had no power to block it). But 22 Democrat-led states sued to block any release, arguing that it would violate privacy laws. The Democrat-led states expressed fears that the data would be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and be used to round up illegal aliens.
So, in the eyes of these Democratic governors, the federal government is obligated to continue paying to feed these people, but the federal government is not allowed to know their names, birth dates, addresses, or Social Security numbers?